Minneapolis VA Health Care System 1 article published in JoVE Neuroscience Microglia as a Surrogate Biosensor to Determine Nanoparticle Neurotoxicity Cayla M. Duffy1,2, Shihab Ahmed1, Ce Yuan1,2,3, Vijayakumar Mavanji1, Joshua P. Nixon1,2, Tammy Butterick1,2,4 1Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, 2Department of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Minnesota, 3Biomedical Informatics and Computational Biology Program, University of Minnesota, 4Minnesota Obesity Center, University of Minnesota Microglia (immune cells of the brain), are used as a surrogate biosensor to determine how nanoparticles influence neurotoxicity. We describe a series of experiments designed to assay microglial response to nanoparticles and exposure of hypothalamic neurons to supernatant from activated microglia to determine neurotoxicity.
